You Won’t Believe What People Think is the Leading Cause of Poverty in America

Given a list of eight factors to vote on, Americans chose “too much welfare” as the root cause of persistent poverty. 24% of respondents chose government welfare, over six times as many people chose “lack of government funding”.

Two decades after President Bill Clinton promised to “end welfare as we know it,” Americans blame government handouts for persistent poverty in the United States more than any other single factor, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Thursday.

Given a list of eight factors and asked to choose the one most responsible for the continuing problem of poverty, 24 percent of respondents in the poll chose “too much government welfare that prevents initiative.”

Whether Americans are too dependent on government was a flashpoint of the presidential campaign last year, and shrinking government has been a focus of the Tea Party movement, which has risen since the election of President Barack Obama.

The fact that overwhelming amounts of welfare lead to a lack of initiative is indisputable. So I have a question for you, America.

Ahem…

Why the *#@! did you vote for the guy who promised more welfare, and by extension more poverty? Do you not recall the conversation initiated by Newt Gingrich involving ‘paychecks versus food stamps’?

No, Newt was pilloried for that tactic, chastised in the media for using racial tones, because in Liberal-land, only minorities are incapable of overcoming poverty.

About the AuthorRusty

Rusty Weiss is a freelance journalist focusing on the conservative movement and its political agenda. He has been writing conservatively charged articles for several years in the upstate New York area, and his writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, American Thinker, FoxNews.com, Big Government, the Times Union, and the Troy Record. He is also Editor of one of the top conservative blogs of 2012, the Mental Recession.